Ashes of Betrayal: A Canada at War Prequel Novella

A tense, atmospheric military-espionage novella about betrayal, loyalty, and what happens when the people giving the orders decide you know too much.

In 2031, Major Alexander Ashcombe leads an SAS team into Slovakia on what should be a deniable retrieval mission. The target is killed, the extraction disappears, and the team escapes with something powerful people are prepared to kill to recover.

Back in Britain, the official explanations begin to unravel. One teammate is nearly killed. Another dies in what looks like an accident. A trusted contact starts asking the wrong questions. And Ash realizes the threat is not outside the system. It is buried inside it.

With his team being eliminated one by one and his family now in danger, Ash is forced to choose between the institutions he once served and the people he refuses to lose. Hunted by operators who know how he thinks, he must uncover who betrayed them, stay alive long enough to expose the truth, and get Claire and Sophie beyond the reach of men who do not leave loose ends.

Ashes of Betrayal is a grounded military and political thriller about compromised loyalties, institutional corruption, and a soldier discovering that survival may require abandoning the life, the name, and the country he thought were his own.

Readers of intelligent espionage and military thrillers will find the moral unease of John le Carré, the operational tension of Mark Greaney, and a story driven as much by trust, consequence, and betrayal as by violence.

Ashes of Betrayal is the prequel novella to Invasion and the Canada at War series.